*That was some decade.
*I composed this piece back in 2010 and practically every part of it was tech jargon that people in various specialized scenes were actually using in their lives and careers. I had to stick in a few conjunctions and transitions, but it was basically pastiche sample-delica.
*Like a lot of texts that sound super-futuristic, as time passes it sounds particularly old-fashioned, atemporally nailed into its period in a way that mere, factual tech reportage could not be.
Well, there it is, all long-read looking in the Medium set
“The Hypersurface of This Decade” by Bruce Sterling (2010)
Bruce Sterling
First published in “Icon” magazine, February 2010.
Today, as of right now, this time-stamped moment, I dwell in the Silicon Roundabout. I live just ten minutes from Old Street Station, amid a swarm of Hackney warrens, which foster seething social-software communities of my fellow London creatives.
My new flat features rapid access to my work, iconic architectural form, and location, location, geo-location!
Deirdre imagines that she has “left our marriage,” but thanks mostly to Dopplr, Deirdre can never really “leave me.” I know exactly where Deirdre and her iPhone are, right now. Deirdre is attending “Mobile Monday” in that recycled church in Amsterdam with that cheese-eating Dutch start-up guy, that big blond loon who always boasts about his lunches on Twitter.
Deirdre also imagines she has “taken everything that we own,” but Deirdre fails to comprehend that I have transcended yesterday’s stifling consumer clutter!
Henceforth I shall dwell in the densest cluster of interaction-design talent in Europe. My new abode is rugged, bracing, confrontational: the seductiveness of masculine red brick walls, the bull’s-blood hue of rivet- stained Edwardian girders! I take courage in the brisk removal of my building’s entire second floor. Even the structure’s splinters and splashes of Blitz shrapnel have a surprising delicacy and charm....
